An independent blog looking at things from a classically liberal perspective. We are independent of any group or organization, and only speak for ourselves, and intend to keep it that way.

Friday, January 15, 2010

A particularly loathsome creature

I am not fond of politicians in general. I have a natural aversion to anyone who feels they ought to be in a position of power over others. Anyone who wants power can't be trusted with it. Now and then a new life form emerges from the political cesspool, one so low and loathsome that it deserves special mention. One such entity is Martha Coakley who wants to be a Senator from Massachusetts, replacing Ted Kennedy.

Like Kennedy, Coakley is a Democrat. But don't assume she's soft on crime. No sir! Not Martha. She so hard on crime she doesn't mind incarcerating innocent people. No wonder the police chiefs in Massachusetts have endorsed her.

Coakley is one of those left-wing authoritarian types who "protects children" even if it means incarcerating innocent people for imaginary crimes. For purposes of this article let us ignore her odious role in fighting the abolition of the victimless crime of smoking pot and instead concentrate on her role in pushing the day care center scare of the 1980s. You may remember that large numbers of panicky parents were convinced by law enforcement that their little darlings were being attacked by Satanists in day care centers across the country. It was all bullshit, but bullshit makes good fertilizer and many a political career has been nurtured by scaremongering and lies. Coakley's career was one of them.

Coakley was involved in the bogus Fells Acre Day Care case where prosecutors "interrogated" children until they made absurd and impossible accusations. Then the prosecutors used those claims to convict the owners of the day care center of these impossible accusations. For instance, one accusation was that a wide butcher knife was plunged into a 4-year-old's anus, where it got stuck. But, call the Vatican on this because its a miracle, there were no cuts, no blood, no damage of any kind. Don't try that at home, the results won't be as miraculous.

Three innocent people were convicted in this panic-driven case and Coakley was up to her reptilian neck in it. She slithered about the case like a cobra seeking out a terrified rabbit for dinner. She hissed, struck and sank her fangs into the case with relish. It was great for her career—after all look at her now, running for the U.S. Senate. Two of the women who were convicted eventually got out of prison with "time served" when the evidence mounted that they were innocent. One woman had her conviction overturned while the other died waiting for justice.

But Gerald Amirault was not so lucky because he was man. Coakley argued that the women could be let out because women only "molest" (not that any such thing happened here) because of the presence of a male predator—imagine if someone said that about blacks and whites: "White criminals are only criminals because of the presence of black predators." The public would scream if such a claim was made on racial grounds, and rightfully so. But in Coakley's world of left-wing feminism such claims about men are perfectly acceptable.

The Massachusetts state's parole board was convinced that Amirault shouldn't be in prison. They unanimously voted for him to be released from prison. But that would put a question mark over Coakley's political career and hamper her ambitions. Like most real predators she is quite happy to advance herself over the bones of those she has destroyed along the way. So Coakley then lobbied acting Governor Jane Swift to deny the commutation of sentence. Coakley didn't want an innocent man walking the streets telling the world how she had destroyed his life.

Eventually Gerald Amirault finished his sentence for the imaginary crimes. Coakley had the option of trying to declare him "sexually dangerous" which would mean he remains incarcerated for the rest of his life, even though his sentence had been filled. (The state uses paid witnesses who declare anyone the state wants incarcerated as "sexually dangerous" allowing a life sentence to be imposed on the basis that the paid witness pretends to know that the convict is likely to reoffend.)

Coakley didn't do that, but not because she was getting soft. She was trying to avoid having the bogus evidence she used brought up in court again. She had ambitions and she didn't want that to happen. As the Wall Street Journalnoted, if such a ruling were sought, "there would have to a virtual re-trial of the entire Amirault case. The DA had to have been deterred by the prospect of parading into a courtroom with the incredible fantasies extracted from Mr. Amirault's alleged victims--about secret rooms, magic drinks, animal butchery, assaults by a bad clown." The excuse used by Coakley and Swift, for denying release for Amirault was that he refused to admit his guilt.

It should be noted that these cases were prosecuted by left-wing ideologues not by right-wing Christians, like the case in Bakersfield. Coakley is a left-wing Democrat. She came into the Amirault case as prosecutor toward the end of the trial. The original prosecutor was Scott Harshbarger who now runs the left-wing lobby Common Cause. In the infamous McMartin Day Care Center case the prosecutor was Lael Rubin, Rubin is a left-wing Democrat as well and a supporter of Obama. Her husband, David Rosenzweig, another lefty, helped whipped up the hysteria over the case through his reporting for the LA Times. As Edgar Butler, in Anatomy of the McMartin Child Molestation Case wrote that Rosenzweig, was having a relationship with Rubin, that began before the McMartin trial so he published articles favorable to Rubin's case, while ignoring all the red flags.

Similarly another journalist from the left, Edward Lempinen, of the San Francisco Chronicle, published a series of breathless claims about Satanists attacking children in some concerted conspiracy. Lempinen basically acted as a hack for two obsessed police officers in that case. He has now gone on to promote global warming hysteria instead, not that this is a big improvement. At the time, the uncritical, very unscientific Lempinen, claimed that Satanists were involved in "scores" of child abuse cases—cases which fell apart due to lack of evidence. Apparently he hasn't changed his standards for his crisis d'jour.

While it is true that politically-driven conservatives may push hysteria as well, and have. We can't ignore that in the prosecution of innocent people as "child abusers" that many committed leftists were involved, aided by the uncritical journalism of biased journalists like Rosenzweig and Lempinen.